Yes. Yes to you both.
Just like the mind/heart/soul explorers of old-times, getting that deep culture disconnect to winnow down to the core actual real needs sometime will require “30 days and nights in the wilderness”.
In current-day American-English the young lady’s Pacific Crest Trail self-discovery hike shows a route to this. The book and movie “Wild”. Based on a real true human discovery experience.

Gary Tait having watch for an hour the two different demonstration drag-saw set-up’s sure has drawn me back again and again to wood sawing REAL requirements.
When I was a little kid my father and a partner had an old, old, very worn out drag-saw they would use. Heavy, heavy, slow to move and set up. The old gasoline engine cranky and hard to start, keep running. Prone to catching on fire on hot summer days, even. Why to my little kids eyes this was a Dragon-saw.
Dad soon went onto chainsaws 2.5 to 5 hp. Later me, yet onto a 24", 7 tooth circular swing blade mill. 20 hp engine driven.

Those old drag saws were really just an early engine assisted cross cut sawing set up.
The same crosscut saw that was back and forth’ed by two men.
Two fit men would have at best been ~1/2 horsepower driving. A well, properly sharpen cross cut saw is fairly fast. Really. 1/4" cut on each push, or, pull stoke.
Now make up drag-saw with sealed ball bearing arms and link ends.
Power it with a DC electric motor.
That motor woodgas direct electrical powered; or charged battery “fueled”.

Do more, with less energy used, with only a small trade off in speed will always be the winner.
tree-farmer Steve unruh

I apologize for the poor resolution, due to the pdf form of the online book.

Cordwood piled over an 8th of a mile long in multiple rows, each pile a different man or crews work. To be loaded into boxcars, to be sent to cities east and west. Prior to the rail line being built around 1903, they hauled timber on the snow with horses 12 miles north to the CP main line.

The foreword of the book describes what the compiler saw over his long life, the area transformed from timber camps and sawmills to nothing but shelter belts around farm yards. It had been called “The bad woods”, almost impossible to clear, stands of huge American elm, green ash, bur oak and trembling aspen. Lady slippers, wild plum, high bush cranberry, diamond willow, hawthorn, chokecherries, pincherries, etc. Now it looks like it was originally a prairie. When I was young large tracts of original forest still existed. It grew very valuable timber, and probably was better for producing lumber and fuel wood than canola and soybeans.

In some of the pictures you see a dam that was built for electricity for the cable cars in Green Bay
This is a picture of downtown Crivitz today and how they get the logs from the forest to the rail head for shipping to who knows where. Probably Japan where we have shipped several of our paper mills.

That’s aspen to the right, right? On the second last pic.
Knotless they pay good here for sauna interior. I sawed a few logs into boards a couple years ago. Almost as profitable as chunking for motor fuel

I get confused on the name for that wood. Out in the western states, they call it Aspen. But here it is referred to as poplar or birch. I am not knowledgeable on the different trees — lucky to be able to guess half the colors in a box of crayons. TomC

Do not feel Mr.Lonely on eastern North American trees IDing TomC.
I have books. Still . . . hard not living back there exposed to year-around direct-seen changes.
Out far-west here it is much fewer species easy-boring.
S.U.

I agree with you on the birch. We have it here and the bark can be loose and they use to make canoes out of it and us it for parchment before some people in Sweden started making paper. I use to ride my motorcycle all up through Colorado in the fall when the Aspens turned yellow. I think the leaves of poplar are similar to Aspen but the bark is not as white-- just my thoughts.TomC

Just had a visitor from Iceland this afternoon. He looked at some poplar and said that’s birch. I said no and took him out in the woods and showed him paper birch, gray birch, black birch, and yellow birch. He didn’t seem convinced. After he left I got out my dendrology book. What I know as Popple is populus tremuloides. The birches are all betula, but there is a canadian wire birch also known as poplar leaved birch. Maybe this is related to european varieties?

Hm…this is getting more complicated than I thought possible.
I know we have a couple of varieties of birch, but they are all very simular. They are all just birch to us.
Poplar is even more mysterious to me now that I read we don’t have it in Sweden.
I guess I have to do some more studying.
Btw, Thodal is a Norwegian name, isn’t it? I’m sorry, I’ve forgotten where you live.

Here’s the Vermont popple we were discussing. The roots are all connected and each stem is a clone. They’re kind of a trashy fast growing tree but good clear wood from a big stem is great. It’s strong lightweight and water resistant. They used it for canoes and water pipes long ago. Back in the seventies there were university test plots for its use as fuel. Never really caught on because its not that dense. I burned it back then for a while and when my my french canadian neighbor saw that he elbowed me in the ribs and said what’s the matter don’t you have enough kids? Apparently up there that’s an old joke. Sure enough my third child was born the next year.

Ja my name is Norwegian but all my family comes from western Sweden. My father’s family is from Gestad on the west side of Lake Vanern. Thodal was my great great and great grandfather’s army name. I don’t know if there’s any blood relation to the Norwegian Todals. I’ve been trying to figure that out for a while.

Things get complicated when common names of trees get used. Trembling aspen is definitely a variety of poplar, or popple. It clones from the roots, the best practice in logging it is clear cut, as it simulates a forest fire, warms and illuminates the soil, promotes good regeneration.

The pic above of Vermont popple is trembling aspen too.

The logs in Toms pic are definitely not birch, you can tell by the rough bark on the bottom logs, birch never do that, and the pattern of dark around former branches is also characteristic. There is another northern variety, commonly called black poplar, populus balsamifera, if I recall, known for the aromatic resin on leaf buds. It propagates readily from dormant branch cuttings, (and roots) as many poplar and cottonwood do. In logging, as with black spruce, regen can be promoted by tramping brush into the mud with machinery.

There is a different variety of white birch, Alaskan birch, as opposed to the paper birch, they both grow here, paper birch has finer bark, but it takes a careful examination of the dormant twigs to distinguish.

Interesting. I’ve never heard of Gestad. I had to look it up. If I got it right it’s a small village on the very south-west side of lake Vänern. 220 miles south of me.
Funny how many Americans have relations to Sweden. As a kid I was always jelaous of those who had relatives across the pond. All my ancestors stayed and chewed there knuckles.

Popple sure looks like birch. However our birch is very dence and considered premium firewood.

This is when your post popped up Garry.
In Tom’s pic I recognised trembling aspen on the yellow stains of lichen. Hard to tell in your pic, Dick.

Our yellow birch is quite dense and very good firewood. Black birch is less dense but has a great wintergreen smell. White or paper birch is less dense and gray birch is not much good for anything although I did heat with it for a while. Black birch is great for turning because it doesn’t check.
You’re right on Gestad. I’ve never been there.

How about Balm of Gilead? That’s the ancient name. I like the smell of the resin. So do honey bees apparently, here they commonly use it in hives as a filler, possibly because it has anti fungal, anti biotic properties.

The negative name might be related to the lumber, it has a slight musky smell, but not nearly as much as cottonwood. Or maybe because it’s regarded as #### poor. It is very wet, and very heavy, but just due to water content. It is very straight, splits great frozen, and should be ideal for log cabins, provided the bark is peeled straight away, so spring cutting once the cambium is active and loose. Dry density is very low, probably like fast grown spruce. Makes ok dunnage timber.